I can't tell you HOW amazed I am with the 5th graders self-portraits. It was an extreme leap for students to jump into a realistic subject, but they were eager to learn and excited to see their work on display! Students used small mirrors to study each feature and proportions of their face. Starting with pencil with a sketch, they outlined details with sharpie and then added pops of color with CRAYOLA class pack of washable markers.

In the kindergarten general education class, students were learning about times of day and the complexity of the solar system. We decided in art to tag along with these themes and create a paper plate weaving inspired by day and night!

Students compared colors to different times of day and we noticed that they were equally divided on the color wheel, just like hot and cool colors. After the color study, students initially painted the paper plate using tempera cakes. These amazing low cost material are a staple in my classroom for little hands learning how to paint. If a student accidentally mix paints, they wash clean with one pass under the sink. I can use one tempera cake almost a FULL school year for nearly 200 students! I buy the cakes individually without the plastic organization bin. I've used styrofoam trays, left over microwavable meal plastic trays, or even a simple plastic picnic plate to keep the paint on. If I am using them for a long duration, two or three weeks, the plates slide perfectly on my drying rack! They store perfectly and again a GREAT way to teach little people about painting. Check out Blick for tempera cakes!

On the next return to art, students began to learn the terms warp and loom in relation to their paper plate weaving. After a student mastered the over-under technique, I would get them to teach or assist struggling students. With fall holiday interrupting our weaving flow, we worked on the yarn for three weeks! The development of fine motor skills is important with Elementary age students. The dexterity of their hands is important to handwriting and their spacial and visual reasoning.

The final addition to the weaving was a sharpie face depicting day and night! Check out these awesome works of art from our Kindergarten artists! We used the plates on our nonfunctioning school clocks, which will be fixed in February!